retro recipe revamp: quesillo de piña con la menta

Sorry for the lack of posts round these parts, but the last fortnight has been crazy busy. I hope this Venezuelan pineapple and mint flan makes up for it.

Hey, even if you don't like pineapple, or mint, or (god forbid) flan, how could you not love the vintage cookbook this week's recipe came from? Allow me to introduce you to the authorised British edition of Latin American Cooking, released in 1970 as part of the 'Foods of the World' Time Life Books series, a cookbook filled with wonderful full-page colour photographs and historical and geographical information about the foods of Latin America. And the people that eat them. Check this out. 

Cool kids partying in Peru, 1968

Kitty cats round the buffet in Rio, late 60s.

A fancy Columbian family about to tuck into a lunch of fried plantains and a disturbingly-decorated piggy.

I don't think I need to tell you that I love this book.  So again, it was hard to decide what to make. Despite its retro aesthetic, it's actually full of all kind of interesting recipes for food that's something close to "authentic" Latin American cuisine; there's step-by-step pictures to help you make tamales and tortillas and an in-depth section on cooking parrillero, or Argentine BBQ. There's also this handy guide, in case you didn't know how:

But seeing as I've been under the weather this week, I made the decision not to drink tequila and instead to make a pineapple flan with bitter caramel atop a firm but delicate custard of eggs, condensed milk and pineapple juice - and I decided to infuse the milk with fresh mint, just for a bit of a lift.  I poured the caramel and custard into individual darioles and reduced the cooking time by about half. 

While the end result is not quite as silky as a custard made entirely from milk or cream, the punchy bright flavours of the pineapple and mint more than make up for it and inject a little summertime spritz into a classic dessert. I'm thinking this dish would provide the ideal finish to a Latin American summer BBQ; hot weather, cold, strong cocktails, people dancing to bossa nova on the stereo and a pineapple mint flan. I think I just planned my birthday party. 

Lexi.x

Quesillo de piña con la menta (pineapple flan with mint)

Adapted from Latin American Cooking (1970)

Makes 1 large flan serving 6 - 8, or 7 small dariole-sized flans

For the caramel:

200g caster sugar

6 tbs water

For the custard:

1 tin condensed milk (395g)

1 sprig of mint

3 whole eggs + 2 egg yolks

1 1/2 cups pineapple juice (I used the retro-friendly tall Golden Circle tin)

3 tbs sugar

mint sprigs, to serve

1. To infuse with mint, pour condensed milk into a small saucepan and add 1 sprig of fresh mint. Heat the milk over very low heat, being careful not to burn, until the mint wilts and the mixture has taken on its flavour and fragrance, about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. 

2. To make caramel, combine caster sugar and water in a heavy saucepan and swirl gently until sugar begins to dissolve. Heat the mixture over medium heat, swirling (not stirring) so that the sugar dissolves evenly. Let the mixture bubble away until it becomes a gorgeous dark golden colour (like tea) and takes on a heavenly caramel smell. Remove from heat quickly. Be careful as the mixture gets very, very hot and can burn instantly once the colour starts to develop. 

3. Being very careful not spill the mixture (and burn your hands off), pour the caramel into the bottom of your mould/s. (If you want to, using a folded tea towel or oven mitts, you can pick up the mould and swirl the mixture round and up the sides - I didn't bother with my mini-flans.) Set aside to cool slightly. 

4. Heat the oven to 325F/170C and put your kettle on to boil. To make your custard, beat the eggs and extra yolks until well combined and creamy. Remove the mint sprig from the cooled condensed milk and slowly add it to the eggs along with the pineapple juice and sugar, beating gently all the while (the mixmaster was great for this). When well combined, strain the mixture through a sieve to remove any lumps and pour into mould/s. 

5. Place the mould/s into a baking pan with high sides and gently slide this into the preheated oven. Pour enough boiling water into the pan to come half-way up the sides of the mould/s. Bake for around 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. When cooked, remove flans from water and set aside to cool, before refrigerating for at least 3 hours. 

6. To serve, run a sharp knife around the edge and sides of the flan/s and dip the bottom of the mould briefly in hot water. Place your serving plate upside down over the mould and invert flan. If it doesn't budge, give it a little tap on the bench and it should slip out. Garnish with mint sprigs.

retro recipe revamp: cinnamon scroll cake with fresh raspberry frosting

I'm so excited about this little project; I reckon I spent like, 47% of my time last week thinking about what to make next. That's a lot of time, when you're meant to be finishing a PhD. Unfortunately, all of the rest of the time I was thinking about my thesis; this didn't leave much room for anything else. Oh well. Sorry Martha Stewart.

I'll tell you what though, it was worth it. This week's retro recipe comes from one of my little McAlpin's Test Kitchen Recipe booklets, of which I have a couple. They're not dated, but the Mixmaster in the test kitchen picture is the same 1950s model that I have at home and judging from the ovens and stoves, I'd say we're looking at the mid 1950s. You want to see what this test kitchen looks like - trust me.

Dita Von Teese, eat your heart out! Oh, I guess she already did. I just love the set up here: not only can the audience see how to use McAlpin's flour to make all kinds of goodies, but they can marvel at the pristine white cooking-lab coats the demonstrators wear. This little booklet cost 1 florin (or 2 shillings) at the time, which is equivalent to around $2.90 today, according to the Reserve Bank's pre-decimal inflation calculator (!). I guess that makes these little treasures the equivalent of a modern budget cooking publication like Woolworth's goodtaste magazine ($3.95), only it's filled with around 175 recipes for baked goods. Which, of course, made it difficult to decide what to make. I was tempted (?) by the Wholemeal Savoury Tongue Squares, but decided in the end to go with what had caught my eye early on, the Cinnamon Scroll Cake with Pink Frosting. So on Saturday morning, I got to work.

This is basically a coffee cake, flavoured with cinnamon and coffee essence, with a gorgeous pink swirl running right through. The Test Kitchen tops this marvel off with a frosting flavoured with raspberry essence that is tinted pink. I realised this week - with ensuing shame - that I had never made a marble cake before, or indeed anything 'swirled' or 'marbled', so it was this that I was most excited about. I decided to go with the cake recipe mostly as it was originally written; I only swapped the coffee essence for some espresso powder and added a little more milk, because the batter seemed a little thick. The resulting was light and moist, with just a pretty whisper of cinnamon and coffee flavours. And yes, swirling pink batter through coffee-coloured batter with a knife was as exciting as I'd hoped it would be.

The real excitement in the end though, was the frosting. I kept an eye out this week for raspberry essence but the closest I came was Queen's Strawberry Essence. This is just didn't seem right. And actually, I realised, I wanted a bright and punchy raspberry flavour to liven up a relatively plain coffee cake. So, I used fresh raspberries in my frosting. And Quincy nodded in her small puffy way, the sun came out and the birds began to sing.

Another excellent retro recipe vamp experiment. I'd do this for a living, I reckon.

Lexi.x

Cinnamon Scroll Cake with Fresh Raspberry Frosting
Cake recipe adapted from McAlpin's Test Kitchen Recipes (circa 1955) 
Frosting recipe adapted from makinglifedelicious.com

For cake:
230g plain flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
200g caster sugar
115g butter, softened
2 eggs
7 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
a few drops of rose (or cochineal) food colouring
1 quantity of Fresh Raspberry Frosting (recipe below)

1. Heat oven to 180C. Prepare a 7 inch square cake tin by greasing and lining bottom with baking paper.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into a medium bowl.

3. Add the espresso powder to 1 tbsp of the milk, mix to dissolve and set aside.

3. In the large bowl of your stand mixer, or a larger bowl, beat the butter until soft and creamy. Sift in the   dry ingredients, add 4 tbsp of milk, and mix at medium speed until well combined. Don't worry if your batter looks a little dry and lumpy at this point.

4. Add the eggs and 2 remaining tbsp of milk and mix to make a smooth batter.

5. Pour or spoon 1/4 of the batter into a medium bowl. To this smaller quantity, add a few drop of food colouring. Beat to incorporate. Pretty!

6. To the remaining mixture, add the dissolved espresso mixture and the cinnamon. Beat to combine.

7. Pour or spoon the cinnamon batter into your prepared cake tin. Add the pink batter to the top of this and with a butter knife, swirl the pink mixture through until it looks pleasantly marbled.

8. Bake for 40 - 45 minutes (or until a cake tester poked into the middle comes out clean; mine took 45.)

9. Sit on a cake rack to cool for 10 minutes, then carefully remove cake from tin. Allow to cool completely on rack before frosting.

For frosting:

3/4 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

55g butter

1/4 - 1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice

1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted

a little milk to loosen, if needed

1. Heat raspberries in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir with a wooden spoon to break up. When the berries are no longer whole and look more like a coulis or sauce, strain to remove the seeds. Return the seedless liquid to the saucepan and look a little longer until reduced by nearly half. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

2. In the small bowl of a stand mixer or using a hand-held mixer, beat butter a little. Add 1 cup of icing sugar, 1/2 tsp lemon juice and raspberry puree. Beat until well combined, then add remaining icing sugar. If the mixture seems too stiff, add the extra lemon juice. Check again and if you still want it softer, add milk a teaspoon at a time until you reach desired consistency.

3. Put on your cooking-lab coat, and spread artfully onto your cake.

retro recipe revamp: toad-in-the-hole with apple and thyme

I don't know if shows, but I collect stuff. Like, lots of stuff, of all different kinds. It isn't about completing sets of anything and it isn't about the chase. I just love old things - a lot. I have a bunch of salt and pepper shakers that I use as decoration, because the designs are so bonkers that you can't use them to shake seasoning out of. I have a giant old biscuit tin of vintage buttons. I love things - almost anything - made from old plastics. I think it drove my poor parents nuts when I was a teenager living at home, because beyond the door of my bedroom was a realm of perpetual chaos. I'm sorry about that, Mum and Dad.

But actually all the things I collect these days, I use in some way. I love my vintage dresses and sweaters, because I live my life in them. I love my vintage dressmaking patterns, because they're this portal into the past that I can look into for inspiration, or instruction. And I love my vintage cookbooks, but, I don't really get to use them very often. I've been thinking recently about how I might change this, but the answer was pretty clear.

One of my favourite bloggers, Casey at Casey's Elegant Musings, often shares pages from her collection of vintage magazines and books - and I love those posts. So I thought I'd share some of the wonders I come across in my own collection of recipe books. Some look delicious, some look ridiculous; there are many reasons I love my books. But I've decided, in the spirit of actually using the books, to try and revamp recipes (where necessary). The idea is to help translate some of these dishes into things we might actually want to cook and eat, without losing too much of their original appeal. Some I think will be easier than others, but I'm looking forward to the challenge!

So, first up, I've chosen a dish from what was probably the first vintage recipe book I become fascinated with: The Golden Circle Tropical Recipe Book. My Mum had a copy in our cupboard and then I chanced upon another years later at a book fair. I picked it up and realised that I knew all the recipes and illustrations by heart, because I'd leafed through it so often as a child. It's full of wonderful recipes, great photos and illustrations - and every one of them features Golden Circle canned pineapple.

I'd been looking for an excuse to make toad-in-a-hole for a while. I mean, sausages baked in batter? Yes please! The Golden Circle recipe book has you add an entire can of drained canned pineapple to the batter; I couldn't quite bring myself to do this. But I did like the idea of a little bit of sweet fruit cutting through the richness of the pork sausages and moistening the batter. So I threw in some apple and added a little fresh thyme to make the batter a little more savory and moody. Then, 'why stop there?' I thought, so I replaced the milk with buttermilk and the full-sized pork sausages with Jonathan's chipolatas - and baked the dish in individual little pie tins. This is what mine looked like.

It was totally delicious. The apple did just what I'd hoped it would and the thyme lifted the batter to new heights. I'll totally make this again, perhaps though with gravy and company, served as part of a retro menu.

I think we're off to a good start...

*Please note: apologies if when you first visited the recipe wasn't here. It disappeared without me realising. All fixed now!

Toad-in-the-hole with apple and thyme

Adapted from The Golden Circle Tropical Recipe Book (circa 1965)

Serves 2

butter, to grease

6 good-quality pork chipolatas

115 g plain flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

a few grinds of black pepper

a sprig of thyme, leaves removed and chopped if necessary

1 egg

130 ml of buttermilk

1 apple, peeled, cored and cut into 6

1. Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Grease individual tins with butter. 

2. Cook pork chipolatas in a frying pan over medium heat until browned. Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, salt, pepper and thyme leaves until well combined. In a smaller bowl, whisk egg and buttermilk gently until combined. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir gently until combined. 

4. Pour batter equally into greased dishes. Top each with three sausages and squeeze a piece of apple between the snags, three each dish.

5. Pop into oven and bake until puffed and golden, about 20 minutes.